There was only one thing that mattered.
Only one end he could focus on. And it wasn’t capturing Jerry.
It was Margo—always.
The money didn’t matter.
This shitstain walking away with millions didn’t matter.
“Give me my wife.”
“I like how focused you are, Mr. Kagan—or may I call you Simon?”
“Tell me where you want me to meet you.”
“All business.” He sighed. “As you wish.”
The faintly British accent dug under his skin and mixed with the fury and molten madness he’d barely been keeping at bay. Once he’d tolerated the accent. It belonged to the lyrical and somehow stilted awe of a boy who didn’t know what to do with a studio. And the cultured formality of the man who’d helped start his career.
Now it turned his stomach.
Now he wanted to stab at his ears to obliterate it.
Jerry rattled off an address on the fringes of the city. A place Simon would never go, let alone travel to with a fucking boatload of cash.
A desolate place the cops didn’t bother with.
Carson.
On the ashes of his old home.
The place Simon had destroyed with glee in his heart.
His chest tightened and swirled with the need to bellow out a shout.
“You have twenty-five minutes. Just you, Simon.”
Before he could answer—or ask for more time—the line went dead.
Simon hurled the phone at the wall, blind rage fueling him across the room to Ian. Ian scrambled back, shock widening his ocean-colored eyes at the attack. Simon shoved his forearm along his fragile throat, ignoring the bruises he’d already given Ian, and lifted him up against the partition. The room trembled and wavered in Simon’s periphery as Ian’s face went red, then purple.
Ian clawed at his arm, gasping for breath.
If there was a scream trapped between them, Simon couldn’t hear it above the rushing hate and anger clogging his senses.
Ian’s girl slammed her fists into his back, but Simon barely felt it. Everything inside him was frozen.
“If anything happens to Margo—anything—there is no corner you can scuttle off to that I won’t find you. There will be no body. No blood. I will end you in ways that no forensic team could imagine.”
Then he stepped back and let Ian drop.
Zoe dropped into a protective cage around Ian.
The gesture threatened to crack open his frozen heart, but he didn’t have time to worry about their feelings or the unfairness that Ian’s girl was here and his was not.
The room was eerily silent as he turned and faced Donovan and Aidan. “Get me there—I don’t care how. I don’t care what fucking laws we break. Get me to my wife now.”
After that, he couldn’t keep track of what happened. Aidan had people setting him up with a tracker and listening devices. They tried to tag him, but Simon was already shaking them off to plow his way through the maze of people set up in Donovan’s control room.